New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast

Episode: An Open-Ended Conversation with Bernardo Kastrup
Date: October 7, 2025
Host: Jeffrey Mishlove
Guest: Bernardo Kastrup

Episode Overview

This wide-ranging conversation between Jeffrey Mishlove and Bernardo Kastrup delves deep into idealism, the shifting metaphysical underpinnings of Western culture, consciousness, parapsychology, dissociation, the daimonic, and even the nature of UFOs. Kastrup, philosopher and author, positions analytical idealism as an increasingly persuasive worldview. The episode traverses fundamental philosophical questions, personal anecdotes, and the lived implications of metaphysical shifts, all colored by Kastrup’s frank, reflective tone and deep scholarly grounding.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Essentia Foundation and the Mission of Idealism

[03:52–05:41]

• The Essentia Foundation: Kastrup shares the rapid growth of the foundation, originally a modest venture, now reaching millions with its accessible philosophical content.
  • “Our videos are getting millions of views which we didn’t expect... that has grown to a proportion that was unimaginable four years from now.” (04:08)
• Purpose: The foundation is not dedicated exclusively to analytical idealism, but to all forms that place consciousness as the ground of reality, welcoming both supporting and critical perspectives.

2. The Challenge to Materialism & Cultural Metaphysics

[05:41–11:10]

• Materialism’s dominance: Kastrup and Mishlove discuss how materialism became the “water we swim in” since the 19th century, shaping not only science but personal meaning and social values.
  • “For our generations, it has been the water we swim in... our metaphysics... calibrates, for instance, our understanding of the meaning of life, our values, how to relate to ourselves, other people...” (09:12)
• Why does materialism persist?: Most opposition to idealism stems from misunderstandings or deep-seated cultural habits rather than rational counterarguments.
  • “Most oppositional arguments are usually based on a misunderstanding of idealism...” (05:48)
• Metaphysics as cultural glue: Referencing Sorokin, they explore how shifts in metaphysics underlie societal upheavals and crises.
  • “He looks at metaphysics as what he calls the glue that holds a whole society together...those periods of transition can be very rough, very dangerous...” (07:58, 10:19)

3. The Contemporary Shift from Physicalism

[11:10–14:01]

• Historical parallels: The last great metaphysical transition in the 19th-century, driven by the rise of the bourgeoisie and materialist metaphysics, is compared to today’s potential shift.
  • “Physicalism is... a dead man walking. You know, there is only so far cultural reflexes and prejudice can deter the power of reason and evidence.” (13:19)
• Darwin’s role: Emphasized as key to legitimizing materialism by explaining life without religious metaphysics.

4. Analytical Idealism and Parapsychology

[14:01–16:58]

• Paranormal phenomena: Kastrup is supportive of research but chooses not to use paranormal evidence as a central argument for idealism, preferring to tackle the “mysteries of the normal.”
  • “Paranormal... for me, it’s like my interest will jump to that once I know what a grain of salt is, if you know what I mean.” (14:30)
• Why not lean on the paranormal as evidence?
  • Concerned that focus on the paranormal could be misread as conceding the adequacy of physicalism for ordinary phenomena.

5. The Problem of Separation and Dissociation

[16:58–25:39]

• Why do we feel separate? Analytical idealism’s challenge: why don’t we feel the unity of consciousness if all is mind?
• Dissociation as a model: Kastrup draws on dissociative identity disorder (DID) as an analogy for how one universal mind can manifest as many apparently separate selves.
  • “We know that dissociative identity disorder has signs in an FMRI that betray its presence... All that we need to do is to extrapolate what we know happens in the mind of a person to the mind of the universe.” (17:31–18:57)
• Personal and clinical examples: Both Kastrup and Mishlove reference psychological phenomena (e.g., memory, allergy, and even eye color differences among alters) as supporting evidence against strict physical causation.
  • “If you ask me personally, I have had what you could call semi dissociative experience... once that dissociation ends, you know retroactively that you were dissociated...” (20:59)

6. Consciousness, Biology, and Ego

[28:42–32:32]

• Body as outward appearance of mind: Kastrup posits that our physical bodies reflect mental processes, not just in the brain but in all living tissue.
  • “If meat is correlated with experience in one case, why would it not in the other case? ... the entire body is what our mental inner life looks like.” (30:16)
• Internal dissociations: It is evolutionarily advantageous for bodily functions to operate subconsciously, as a form of mental compartmentalization.

7. Simulation Hypothesis vs. Dashboard Metaphor

[32:32–35:54]

• On simulations: Kastrup agrees with Tom Campbell that “physicality” is an appearance rendered to an observer but rejects the “simulation hypothesis” term for its misleading connotations.
  • “Physicality is not the thing perceived, just like the sky is not the airplane’s dashboard... Physicality, in my view, is just the contents of the dashboard as provided by evolution...” (33:10–34:37)
• Not a deliberate deception: Reality isn’t an engineered simulation, insists Kastrup; confusion is a natural outcome of our interpretive limitations.

8. Quantum Physics, Consciousness, and Collapse

[35:54–42:16]

• Wave function collapse: Kastrup doesn’t endorse the view that consciousness “collapses” the wave function in quantum physics, seeing this as a misunderstanding—collapse is epistemic, not ontological.
  • “I think collapse is epistemic. I think what’s going on is that we can’t predict everything nature will do because of epistemic limitations.” (36:48–37:32)
• Detectors vs. observers: Even with instruments, a conscious observer is always the endpoint; collapse, as such, is always relative to knowledge obtained in consciousness.
  • “If nobody looks, you don’t know. There’s nothing you can say about it... knowledge exists in consciousness.” (41:29)

9. Psychokinesis, Superpowers, and the Will

[42:16–46:38]

• Distinguishing superpowers: Kastrup makes an important distinction between the “automatic” worldshaping power metaphorically implied by wave function collapse and the far more modest notion of psychokinesis (PK).
  • “The consciousness causes collapse interpretation would mean that... by merely looking at the world, you defined what the world is. It’s a fantastic claim. The other claim is that if you focus on it... you may have some influence on a very small part of the world. I accept the latter, I don’t accept the former.” (43:11)
• Imperfections in nature: No process is absolutely perfect; dissociation, too, has “permeable” boundaries, potentially accounting for PK and ESP phenomena without grandiose claims.

10. The Daimon, the Impersonal Will, and Lived Philosophy

[48:26–53:21]

• Personal experience of the daimon: Kastrup describes the compelling, impersonal force that shapes his trajectory in life—a lived, not merely conceptual, reality.
  • “It is a felt presence, a very clear, often overwhelming felt presence. It is impossible to deny it unless you have a tremendous amount of prejudice and willful ignorance.” (50:15)
• Personification as moral necessity: Following Jung, the daimon is best “exteriorized” as an entity, enabling personal moral agency while acknowledging its force. He draws parallels to Socrates and Jung’s individual psychology.
  • “I personify it because I follow a suggestion made by Jung many decades ago. Jung suggested that the force of the impersonal in us is so powerful... The only way for us to retain some degree of moral ground is to exteriorize it and personify it and say, that is not me that acts through me, but it is not me.” (50:18)

11. From Daimon to Demon: Morality, Archetypes, and Jung

[58:42–63:36]

• Jung’s archetypes and the “demonic”: Daimons are seen as semi-autonomous psychic complexes; some take on traits we label as “demonic,” others as angelic, but both arise from the collective unconscious and its archetypal admixtures.
  • “A demon is a particular archetypal admixture of a daimon. Other daimons are angels. Your guardian angel is, under this perspective, a daimon.” (62:23)

12. UFOs, Archetypes, and Cultural Perception

[63:36–70:47]

• UFOs as daimonic/archetypal phenomena: Following Jacques Vallee and others, Kastrup frames UFO encounters as updated cultural manifestations of longstanding, partially perceived archetypes in the collective unconscious—real, but not necessarily “aliens” as traditionally conceived.
  • “What we call aliens now is just the same thing that we used to call fairies and before that angels and demons. And all the way back into primordial history. This stuff has been around us...” (64:31)
• Cultural “dressing” of unexplained phenomena: We interpret such phenomena using cultural frameworks at hand, whether as fairies, demons, or extraterrestrials.
• On government disclosure and physical evidence: Kastrup is agnostic, having been “personally disappointed” by recent revelations but affirms the enduring, real nature of the archetypal phenomenon.

13. Closing Thoughts on the Depth of Mystery

[70:47–71:38]

• Radical humility in philosophy: Kastrup urges listeners to acknowledge the current limits of human understanding regarding consciousness and existence.
  • “The depth of that mystery goes far, far beyond what most people intuit. Most people think we’ve figured out most of it. We haven’t even begun. Future generations will realize how far we are from truly grokking what’s going on. I would suspend all judgment until that time.” (70:59)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cultural metaphysics:
  “It is our metaphysics... calibrates, for instance, our understanding of the meaning of life, our values, how to relate to ourselves, other people in the world at large.” — Bernardo Kastrup (09:12)

• On the shift away from physicalism:
  “Physicalism is... a dead man walking. You know, there is only so far cultural reflexes and prejudice can deter the power of reason and evidence.” — Bernardo Kastrup (13:19)

• On dissociation as a model for selfhood:
  “All that we need to do is to extrapolate what we know happens in the mind of a person to the mind of the universe. It’s not a fundamental problem.” — Bernardo Kastrup (18:47)

• On dashboard reality vs. simulation:
  “Physicality, in my view, is just the contents of the dashboard as provided by evolution by natural selection. So I agree with Tom unreservedly on this.” — Bernardo Kastrup (34:30)

• On the daimon:
  “There is a will within us that does not have our ego as target or is not serving the ego... That is the diamond right there. It’s that will within us that does not have the best interest of our ego at heart.” — Bernardo Kastrup (53:56)

• On UFOs as archetypal phenomena:
  “What we call aliens now is just the same thing that we used to call fairies and before that angels and demons... Jacques Vallee and others... they are talking about something that is real, that exists.” — Bernardo Kastrup (64:31)

Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Topic | |:--------------|:------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:52 | Growth & mission of the Essentia Foundation | | 05:41 | Core oppositional arguments to idealism | | 09:12 | Influence of metaphysics on culture and personal life | | 13:19 | The cultural ascendancy and decline of materialism | | 14:30 | Paranormal phenomena and analytical idealism | | 17:31 | Dissociation, alters, and the problem of multiplicity | | 20:59 | Psychological and anecdotal evidence for dissociation | | 28:42 | The mind-body relationship and internal dissociation | | 32:32 | Simulation hypothesis vs. dashboard metaphor | | 35:54 | Collapse of the quantum wave function and consciousness | | 43:11 | Psychokinesis, permeability of dissociative boundaries | | 48:26 | The daimonic and its personal influence | | 53:56 | Explanation of the daimon in philosophy and experience | | 58:42 | Daimons, demons, and Jungian archetypes | | 63:36 | UFO phenomena as archetypal and daimonic | | 70:59 | Final reflections on the limits of current understanding |

Flow & Tone

• Language and tone: The dialogue is scholarly yet deeply personal—Kastrup’s insights are often animated by lived experience and deeply introspective reflections. Both speakers maintain an open, exploratory spirit.
• Recurring theme: The gap between conceptual understanding and lived, experiential knowledge—the importance of direct engagement with philosophical questions rather than merely intellectualizing them.

Final Reflection

Kastrup challenges listeners to radically revise their assumptions about consciousness, reality, and selfhood—insisting that much of what we take as solid (physicalism, personal boundaries, the nature of extraordinary phenomena) may be only habits of cultural narrative or evolutionary utility. The mystery, he argues, is far deeper and more profound than any current paradigm admits.

“Most people think we’ve figured out most of it. We haven’t even begun.”
— Bernardo Kastrup (70:59)

For more resources and publications from the New Thinking Allowed series, visit newthinkingallowed.org.